The arias by Caccini and Peri were the only moves toward “monodic insurgency” (in the words of music historian Piero Weiss)
in the 1589 intermedii.6 The expression is a witty one, because historians have fallen into the habit of calling what happened scarcely a dozen years
later the great “monodic revolution,” and because many
of the same names as took part in the 1589 festivities—Rinuccini, Peri, Caccini, Cavalieri—are to be found among the turn-of-the-century
monodic “revolutionaries.” Yet what actually happened around 1600 was no sudden musical revolution, but only the emergence
into print of musical practices that had been in the process of formation over the whole preceding century. These practices
had been given an additional impetus by the recent humanist revival with all its attendant neoclassical theorizing, and by
the backing of prestigious patrons. They emerged into print in four famous books, as follows.

Taruskin, R. (n.d.). Chapter 19 Pressure of Radical Humanism. In Oxford University Press, Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century. New York, USA.
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